MISSION

Circo Zero creates performances and artist solidarity programs responding to political crises, while centering queer bodies and ideas. Producing in San Francisco and beyond since 1985, our experimental programming is guided by anti-racist, queer, feminist, and decolonial practices. Circo Zero is an artistic laboratory of political engagement, where the tools of dance, improvisation, somatics, collaboration, and public gathering are activated towards more liberated and loving realities.

HISTORY

Instigated by Keith Hennessy in 2001, Circo Zero produces innovative live performances and artist solidarity programs responding to political crises, while centering queer bodies and ideas. CZ foregrounds LGBTQ+, BIPOC, and Two Spirit artists. Rooted in San Francisco since the 1980s, we are deeply engaged in experimental and diverse dance, LGBTQ2S+, and activist communities where we function as an artistic testing ground of social engagement and cultural wellbeing.

Artistic Director Hennessy was a key collaborator in the influential dance collaboratives Contraband and CORE and a co-founder of 848 Community Space and CounterPulse. Emerging during the AIDS crisis, Hennessy’s work helped establish the genre, aesthetics, and milieus of Queer performance. The SF Bay Guardian wrote, “Hennessy is among those artists whose contributions have helped form the size, shape, and feel of art and life in the Bay Area.”

Since 2001, CZ has toured to 75+ cities and 23 countries producing more than 50 works in contexts ranging from punk activist squats to European state theaters to San Fracnisco beaches. We have been awarded the Guggenheim, USA Fellowship, NY Bessie, Isadora Duncan Awards, and a Hewlett 50 Commission.

PEOPLE

BOARD OF DIRECTORS

Emily Leap, President

Emily Leap is an Armenian-American dancer, circus artist trained at San Francisco Circus Center, mother and has danced in the works of Lizz Roman, Sara Shelton Mann, and Keith Hennessy. Emily is an entrepreneur and small business owner working as a doctor of Traditional Chinese Medicine with a specialty in healing chronic pain and working with dancers to sustain intensely physical careers. She is dedicated to the healing and service of Bay Area dancers, implementing and sustaining effective systems of governance to steward community resources, and as a former dancer (2009-2017) for Circo Zero, is deeply committed to the thriving of the organization.

Michael Whitson, Treasurer

Michael Whitson is a disabled, mixed-race Native American musician, poet, creative writer, and community builder with a long San Francisco history of community arts administration. He was a co-founder of 848/CounterPulse in 1990 and co-director of the organization from 1990-2007. He is the founder (2009) and co-director of Yuba Libre, a 30 acre community-based retreat center integrating ecological stewardship with the generative process of bringing QTBIPOC+, artists, teachers, and activists into the Sierra foothills adjacent to a "wild and scenic" protected section of the Yuba River. He has served as a Director on the Board of numerous non-profits over the last 25 years, works as the Managing Director of Gravity, and is dedicated to advancing Circo Zero’s equity initiatives.

Ryanaustin Dennis, Secretary

Ryanaustin Dennis (he/they) is a curator, artist, consultant, and cultural strategist. As a founding member of The Black Aesthetic, a curatorial collective, their practice is concerned with how 20th and 21st century experimental performance, film, and writing histories are shaped by the metaphysics of blackness. They have done curatorial work for E.M. Wolfman Bookstore, Kadist, SFMOMA Open Space, Eastside Arts Alliance, Betti Ono, Soundwave Biennial, and as a Southern Exposure Curatorial Council Fellow. They previously co-curated the Black Life a series at the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive and currently co-run Rump Studios.

Keith Hennessy, Board Member 

Keith Hennessy, MFA, PhD, is a dancer, writer, choreographer, activist, and teacher. Living and working in San Francisco/Ramaytush Ohlone territory since 1982, he tours internationally. A white and queer artist, Hennessy’s work is interdisciplinary and experimental, motivated by anti-racist, queer-feminist, and decolonial movements. Keith’s recent collaborators include Sarah Crowell, Ishmael Houston-Jones, Snowflake Calvert, and jose abad. Awards include Guggenheim, USArtist, NY Bessie, and Bay Area Izzies. He was a co-founder of renowned SF performance venue 848/CounterPulse in 1990 and was the co-director from 1991-2000. Hennessy served as the President of the Board of Directors for the San Francisco Community Land Trust from 2021-2023 and continues to provide pro-bono consulting to affordable housing advocates. 

Belinda He, Board Member

Belinda He is a Singapore-born, San Francisco-based dance artist of Chinese descent who received an MFA in Dance at Sarah Lawrence College under the directorship of Sara Rudner. She utilizes pedagogical and improvisational structures to support her creative processes, which often reflect her deep concern of the weaponization of “fake news” as propaganda, and desire to diversify ways of seeing as an antidote to the violence of erasure. Her physical practices of qigong and the Feldenkrais Method deeply influence her creative work, in the ways she relates to time, space, scale and self. She thrives in collaborative relationships, and enjoys current collaborations with Karla Quintero, Hope Mohr, Heidi Carlsen and Mohammadreza Akrami, which have recently taken her to artist residencies at SARUYA, Fujiyoshida, Japan (2024), The Old Mines, Outukumpu, Finland (2024), The Field Center, Vermont (2024) and Dance Nucleus, Singapore (2023). In addition to dancing, Belinda is a small business owner and healthcare practitioner in San Francisco.

Roberto Gutièrrez Varea, Board Member

Roberto Gutiérrez Varea is a stage director, advocate, and scholar. He is Program Director and Professor of Theater at University of San Francisco, as well as co-Director of the Center for Latinx Studies in the Americas. Varea is the founding artistic director of Soapstone Theater Company and El Teatro Jornalero!, and contributes regularly to journals in performance and peacebuilding. Along with Cynthia E. Cohen and Polly O. Walker, he is the co-editor of Acting Together I: Performance and the Creative Transformation of Conflict: Resistance and Reconciliation in Regions of Violence (New Village Press, 2011) and Acting Together II: Performance and the Creative Transformation of Conflict: Building Just and Inclusive Communities (New Village Press, 2011). He lives in San Francisco.